It’s that time again where I spout into the void through my keyboard and blab about good old days in the summer. Last time, we talked about Dennis the Menace Dairy Queen cups, a local carnival that had a bitchin’ arcade, and a wooden playground that I’m almost certain everyone lived near growing up. This time, we’re visiting an old summer day camp that a local fire hall held during summer vacation.

So, there is this local fire hall that has this playground behind it. I don’t really know any of the details of who, what, when or how but there was indeed a day camp during the summer time that included all ages of elementary school students when I was a kid. It was just one year that my siblings and I went; I had to be about 8 or 9 years old (so, sometime between 97 or 98) but I still remember it like it happened yesterday. There were a shit ton of us kids there, I managed to see at least a dozen of my own classmates at the time and even kids I’ve never seen before.

They divided us all into groups; like 20 or so of us each and there had to be like 5 or 6 groups of us. They had each group do a different “workshop.” Our group started with whiffle ball. I can remember looking at all the other kids and thinking holy shit.... they’re all a lot bigger than me, why the fuck am I in this group of kids playing a sport nonetheless? I suck at sports and, needless to say, I wasn’t very good. When I was suppose to run I didn’t, I couldn’t hit the ball worth shit. I still kind of hate sports because of this.

Next, we did some arts and crafts. We sat under this pavilion at a bunch of picnic tables and they gave us lots of glue and popsicle sticks. I didn’t have a single clue what to make. While others were making picture frames, houses and wooden flowers here I was with a jumbled fucking mess of popsicle sticks glued together. Once one of the kids next to me asked what I was making, the only thing that come out my mouth was “uhhhh... a machine gun.” I had no idea what a machine gun looked like, but I know this wasn’t it. It was legitimately just a pile of sticks chaotically glued together. I was with the older kid group for some reason like I said so I wanted to look cool amongst them. How do you think I did?

Once we were done with crafts, we moved on to what I would just call “free play.” I remember I had my backpack with me and I carried around a slew of bullshit with me in it including a Ninja Turtle and a Power Ranger watch; you know, the ones that had a turtle and a Power Ranger on the front that opened up to reveal the watch part of it. Truth is, I didn’t give a fuck about time, and neither did any other kid; we just wanted the cool figure on the front to show off like some rad bracelet.

Anyways, there was a kid from school who I was hanging out with for a split few seconds; we’ll call him “Kevin.” Kevin was a quiet kid. He saw the watches I had and liked them and for some reason, I gave him the red Power Ranger watch. Not traded for something else equally as cool, just straight up handed it over because I thought he’d appreciate it. Later, Kevin’s mom and older brother noticed he had a cool new watch and the older brother tackled the fuck out of him a couple dozen times trying to get it from him to show his mom what he “stole.” I can’t remember telling anyone I gave it to him, I just kind of saw that whole act through the corner of my eye. So, basically, sorry Kevin.

Still on the “free play” time, and it was nearing the end of the day camp day, they hooked up the ol’ Crazy Daisy! This thing was kind of ferocious in it’s own right. I was the type of kid who loved blasting people with Super Soakers but hated getting it back. We had to play around this Crazy Daisy thing but I didn’t want to get as soaked as I did but what choice did I have? There was a kid there, we’ll call him “Rob,” who would hold onto the Crazy Daisy and do his best Michelangelo holding onto the time scepter in TMNT 3. In retrospect, that’s sorta how I felt about the Crazy Daisy as well.

Before I knew it, my mom picked us kiddos up. We were going to a pool party at my cousins grams place but we made a quick pit stop to Fashion Bug. So, a bunch of women’s clothes... it really made for a boring trip except they DID have some things that caught my eyes. I think it’s the first time I noticed how many flavors of lip smackers they made and also my intro to cool flavored chap stick like Bubble Yum and Blow Pop! I wasn’t able to sample any but just looking was good enough. The picture above isn’t an example of the ones I found but you get the idea.

Well folks, I hope you enjoyed this installment of Summer Memories! Stay tuned for more as the Summer Survival Guide continues! Thanks for reading!